(CN) — A majority of U.S. adults — 57% — say people on airplanes and public transit should be required to wear masks to slow the spread of Covid, according to a new survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. Another 42% of respondents say the opposite.
Unsurprisingly, the survey revealed an enormous partisan divide on the question. A whopping 80% of Democrats say masks should be required for travel, while 71% of Republicans say they should not. A greater proportion of women support the mask mandate than do men, as do people over age 65 compared with those under 30.
Last month, a federal judge in Florida struck down the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's mask mandate, which applied to all travelers in airports, airplanes, trains and buses. The Department of Justice is appealing the decision, and the CDC still recommends people voluntarily wear face coverings while traveling.
"In close spaces, on long flights, masking really has a benefit," said Dr. Lee Riley, a professor of epidemiology at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "People from all different regions get on a plane and go to different places. If you have one outbreak on an airplane, it’s a super-spreader event."
On Wednesday, the European Union dropped its recommendation that member states require masks for airline travel.
According to the Pew survey, only 30% of American adults say they've been wearing masks inside stores and businesses "all or most of the time over the last month." In August 2020, that figure topped 85%. Today, less than half (42%) of Democrats say they wear a mask when visiting an indoor business all or most of the time.
The U.S. is averaging more than 70,000 new coronavirus infections every day, more than double the cases seen a month ago. According to the CDC, the uptick is largely due to the Omicron BA.2.12 subvariant, which is believed to be 25% more transmissible than BA.2. There has not yet been a noticeable spike in Covid-relate deaths, although the virus still kills more than 300 Americans every single day.
"Most of the cases being reported are not very severe," said Dr. Riley. "There doesn’t seem to be an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. So people are taking this a little more lightly than before, almost like the common cold."
Americans are also less annoyed at others who don't share their mask habits. Only 37% said it bothers them when people in public places don't wear masks. And in another instance of mirror-image partisanship, 52% of Democrats said it bothers them when people don't wear masks, while 52% of Republicans said it bothers them when stores and businesses require customers to wear masks.
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